STOCKHOLM: Swedish football fans described surreal feelings as they returned home from Brussels on Tuesday, after two fans were killed in a “terror attack” targeting Swedes just before the start of a match against hosts Belgium.
“When information started spreading in the stands that a shooting had occurred during the first half, you started losing it. It was totally surrealistic, you couldn’t believe it was true,“ 54-year-old Roger Svalhede told AFP shortly after landing at Stockholm’s Bromma airport.
The attack occurred in central Brussels late Monday, when a gunman opened fire on Swedes ahead of the game, killing two of them and wounding a third, before leading police on an overnight manhunt.
“We had been moving around those places, we had passed several times where the shooting occurred. We lived close-by, and close to where the suspected perpetrator was shot,“ Svalhede said, describing how it had starting sinking in that it could have been him ending up being a victim.
“But luckily we weren’t there then.”
Fellow fan Claes Durge, 54, echoed the sentiment.
“They were in the wrong place at the wrong time and it could just as well have been me or somebody else. They were targeting us with yellow shirts,“ he said, wearing a yellow and blue sweater.
“I’m wearing this now, but I had to borrow a shirt then cause I only had yellow ones,“ he added.
After the shootings Swedish fans were kept in the stadium and were only allowed to leave in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
In August, Sweden’s intelligence service Sapo raised its threat level to four on a scale of five after a series of Koran burnings across the country -- most notably by an Iraqi Christian -- sparked outrage in the Muslim world and made the Scandinavian country a “prioritised target”.
In a social media post after the killings, the suspected gunman had boasted of being inspired by the Islamic State group.
The Swedish foreign ministry said the two deceased victims were a man in his 70s from the Stockholm region and a man in his 60s living abroad.
“It’s just tragic. It’s a big sadness, that people can do this and there is so much hate. It’s so pointless,“ 55-year-old Sten Eriksson also told AFP shortly after stepping off the plane.
“It’s hard to describe, it’s just difficult to deal with,“ Eriksson added.
Durge said that despite the tragedy he didn’t want “hate to win.”
“The best way now, I think, is to show that football is fantastic and they can’t be allowed to win. Hate shouldn’t be allowed to win.” - AFP
